Hello! Welcome to Stories Podcast. I'm your host, Amanda Weldon.
Today's story is called The Boy Who Drew Cats, a Japanese fable translated by Lafcadio Hearn and adapted for audio by Daniel Hines.
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Thanks! Enjoy the episode!
The Boy Who Drew Cats A long, long time ago, in a small country village in Japan, there lived a poor farmer and his wife, who were very good people.
They had four children and found it very hard to feed them all.
Thankfully, the elder son was strong enough to work the fields with his father.
The two middle children were little girls.
They had deft, crafty fingers and learned to help their mother almost as soon as they could walk.
But the youngest child, a little boy, did not seem to be fit for hard work.
He was very clever, cleverer than all his brothers and sisters, but he was quite weak and small, and people said he could never grow very big.
They asked him what he liked, and he said reading and drawing, so his parents thought it would be better for him to become a priest than to become a farmer.
The priests there read plenty and also learned beautiful calligraphy and drawings.
So they took him with them to the village temple one day and asked the good old priest who lived there if he would have their little boy for his acolyte and teach him all that a priest ought to know.
The old man spoke kindly to the lad and asked him some hard questions.
He tried to trip up the boy and see if he'd been prepared by his parents, but the boy didn't stumble once.
His answers were so quick and clever that the priest agreed to take the little fellow into the temple as an acolyte and to educate him for the priesthood.
The boy and the family were thankful, and he started his training that same night.
The boy learned quickly what the old priest taught him and was very obedient in most things.
When he was told to read a book, he read it cover to cover without a single complaint.
When he was told to practice writing, he would fill a page with rows and rows of nicely readable text.
He was almost the perfect student.
But only almost. Because for all the boy's strengths, he had one fault, and it drove the priest a little nutty.
The boy liked to draw cats.
In fact, he loved to draw cats.
Anytime his his hands weren't occupied during study hours, he would draw and doodle cats, even where cats ought not to have been drawn at all.
Whenever the boy found himself alone, he drew cats.
He drew them on the margins of the priest's books and on all the screens of the temple and on the walls and on the pillars.
Several times the priest told him this was not right and he'd have to clean up all his cat drawings, but the boy didn't seem to care.
He could not, would not stop drawing cats.
He drew them because he loved them and didn't see any good reason to stop.
Slowly, the priest realized the boy had what is called the genius of an artist. It was a rare and lovely gift, and just for that reason he was not quite fit to be an acolyte.
A good acolyte should study books, not draw cats in the margins while he read them.
So one day, the priest came came down and found that his favorite paper screen, one that had been at the temple for years, now featured a giant cat painted on the side.
The priest wasn't mad, but he realized the temple wasn't the right place for the boy after all.
My boy, he said, pulling him aside gently but firmly.
I'm sorry to say, but you must go away from this temple.
But I like it here, said the the boy.
I get to draw all the time.
And that's the problem, said the priest. This is a place for priests, not painters.
So maybe you will never make a good priest, but perhaps you will become a great artist. Keep practicing your art wherever you go, just not here.
The boy nodded. He understood, and part of him was excited even.
He was going to strike out on his own and see where his art could get him.
One more thing, said the priest. Let me give you a last piece of advice, and be sure you never forget it.
The boy leaned in, listening intently.
This may seem strange, but I've got an intuition about you.
Please, avoid large places at night.
Keep too small. The boy did not know what the priest meant by saying, Avoid large places.
Keep too small. all.
He thought and thought while he was tying up his little bundle of clothes to go away, but he could not understand those words, and he was afraid to ask the priest since it seemed so serious.
Instead, he just told him thank you and goodbye, and they shook hands and parted as friends.
After that, the boy left the temple, unsure but full of hope, and began to wonder what he should do.
If he went straight home, he felt sure his father would be disappointed that he had failed as a priest, so he was afraid to go home.
All at once, he remembered that at the next village, twelve miles away, there was a very big temple.
He had heard there were several priests at that temple.
Maybe they would have more patience for an acolyte who liked to draw, or just more advice on how to be an artist. At any rate, it was his only idea, so he made up his mind to go to the big temple and see what opportunities could be found.
Now, the boy didn't know this, but the big temple had been shut down, and no one was allowed inside.
A while back, the temple had been invaded by a goblin, and no matter how hard the priests prayed, they couldn't get rid of it.
Every night after they'd gone to sleep, the goblin would come out and trash the temple.
Some brave warriors had afterward gone to the temple at night to kill the goblin, but they came out battered and confused, not remembering a thing about their night inside.
It was well known in the town to keep away from the old temple, but the boy wasn't from the town.
Nobody told him about the goblin, so he walked all the way to the village, hoping to be kindly treated by the priests.
Unfortunately for the boy, when he got to the village, it was already dark.
All the people were in bed, but he saw the big temple on a hill at the other end of the main street, and he saw there was a light on inside.
Now, the boy figured it was a priest, up late praying or working, but everyone in the village knew the lamp was lit as a goblin trick meant to draw in careless travelers, and it worked perfectly on the boy.
He went at once to the temple and knocked.
There was no sound inside.
He knocked and knocked again, but still nobody nobody came.
At last he pushed gently at the door and was surprised and happy to find that it was unlocked.
So he went in and saw a lamp burning, but no priest. Strange, he said.
They must be out praying or on a night walk.
The priest at his own temple had done that often enough, praying under the bright moon and cool stars.
So he figured some priests would be sure to come very soon, and he sat down and waited.
It was only then he noticed that everything in the temple was gray with dust and thickly spun over with cobwebs.
This was, of course, because the temple had been abandoned.
But the boy just thought the priests must be too busy to clean.
These guys are a mess, he said, wiping a finger over a paper screen and coming away with a handful of dust. They for sure need an acolyte to help clean, and if they need this much cleaning, meaning they'd probably be happy to let me paint when it was done.
So the boy went about the temple, dusting from the ceiling to the floor, and then sweeping the whole mess out the back door.
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Once the temple was clean, or much cleaner at least, the boy noticed that there were many big white screens, perfect for drawing cats.
If only he had something to paint with.
With that thought, the boy continued to clean the temple, this time moving crates of supplies and peeking through each one.
Finally, he found what he was looking for.
A writing box, full of good brushes and a dark black ink.
The boy didn't know it, but these paints had been blessed by the priests for another project and then forgotten when they fled the temple.
Still, the paint held power, and it seemed to eagerly stick to the boy's brush when he dipped it in.
Let's decorate these screens a bit, he said, and then he started to draw.
The ink went on like magic, every stroke perfect, every line exactly where he wanted it.
He painted cat after cat, at first waiting for the priests to return, and eventually forgetting all about them, just painting cats for the joy of it.
Finally, when he had used the blessed ink to draw a cat on every screen he could find, he gave a great yawn.
It had been a long day of walking and a long night of cleaning and painting.
It was nearly midnight, and he needed some rest. He was just about to lie down to sleep beside one of the screens when he suddenly remembered the words, Avoid large places, keep to small.
The temple was very large, he was all alone, and as he thought of these words, though he could not quite understand them, he began to feel for the first time a little afraid.
And he decided to look for a small place in which to sleep.
He found a little cabinet with a sliding door and went into it and shut himself inside.
Then he laid down and fell fast asleep.
And he didn't know it, but he was just in time.
Because a few minutes later, when midnight came, the goblin came scratching out of the darkness, hunting after the smell of a human.
The boy was woken up shortly after by a terrible noise.
He heard grinding and squealing and scratching.
There was more, like a battle was being waged.
It sounded so scary that the boy didn't even dare open the door to peek.
This place must be haunted, he said to himself, shaking with fear.
No wonder no one was here.
All at once, the light in the temple went out, putting everything into perfect darkness.
The boy bit his lip to keep from screaming, and the sounds of fighting grew louder and louder outside his little cabinet.
They went on and on and became more awful, and then all the temple shook like an earthquake.
Screamed the boy, unable to hold it in any longer.
But then, all at once, the shaking stopped, and so did the sounds from outside.
Even with the silence, the boy was still afraid to move.
He kept as still as he could until the light of the morning sun shone into the cabinet through the cracks of the little door.
Then he got out of his hiding place very cautiously and looked about.
The first thing he saw was that all the floor of the temple was was covered with strange purple blood.
And then he saw, lying dead in the middle of it, an enormous, monstrous rat.
A giant rat, bigger than a cow!
The boy didn't know it, but the goblin usually went about in the form of a colossal, feral rat.
He liked how it made the priests scream and run.
But now, it was dead, and the temple was free of the goblin's curse.
But who or what could have killed it?
There was no man or other creature to be seen.
The boy looked around confused until his eyes fell on all the cats he had drawn with the holy ink.
Each one looked a little frazzled, like they'd been in a battle, and they had dripping paint lines near their claws, the same color as the goblin's blood.
The cats he had drawn had killed the goblin and saved the temple.
The boy ran out into the village and found the priests at their small temporary temple.
He told them what had happened and, cautiously, they followed him to the temple.
There, they found the goblin dead, the temple cleaned, and beautiful guardian cats posed ferociously on every screen.
They cheered the boy and declared that he wouldn't be an acolyte, but an honored artist of the temple, free to draw whatever he liked.
The boy accepted happily, and though he could draw whatever he liked, he liked cats best, so he kept drawing them.
His legend spread across Japan and he became a very famous artist. Some of the paintings of his cats still survive to this very day, staring out from their paper screens, ready to defend Japan should the need arise.
And the boy lived happily ever after.
The End Today's story, The Boy Who Drew Cats, was a Japanese fable, translated by Lafcadio Hearn and adapted for audio by Daniel Hines.
It was edited and produced for you by Andrew Martin, and performed for you by me, Amanda Weldon.
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Thanks for listening!
